\n<\/p>\n
The price of oil hit nearly $117 (\u00a389) a barrel on Monday as Donald Trump threatened to \u201cblow up\u201d and \u201ccompletely obliterate\u201d Iranian electricity plants, oil wells and its export hub Kharg Island if it did not agree to a deal.<\/p>\n
Brent crude rose after the US president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that if a deal was not agreed and the strait of Hormuz was not reopened, the US would take further action.<\/p>\n
He wrote: \u201cWe will conclude our lovely \u2018stay\u2019 in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet \u2018touched\u2019 \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime\u2019s 47 year \u2018Reign of Terror\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jerome Powell, the US Federal Reserve chair and a regular target of the president\u2019s ire, claimed on Monday that the central bank was in a \u201cgood place \u2026 to wait and see\u201d how the economic fallout of the war on Iran unfolds. But he cautioned that policymakers will monitor two conflicting factors \u2013 the stability of both the US workforce and prices \u2013 as they consider what to do with interest rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s sort of downside risk to the labor market, which suggests keep rates low, but there\u2019s upside risk to inflation, which suggests maybe don\u2019t keep rates low,\u201d Powell said during a Q&A session at Harvard University. \u201cYou\u2019ve got tension between the two objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, who has repeatedly provided conflicting signals around the aims and possible duration of the conflict, threatened to seize the Iranian export hub of Kharg Island in an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Trump said: \u201cTo be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: \u2018Why are you doing that?\u2019 But they\u2019re stupid people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don\u2019t. We have a lot of options,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The oil price rose by 2% to $116.89 a barrel in early trading on Monday \u2013 not far off the $119.50 highest level since the US-Israel war with Iran started on 28 February \u2013 before later dipping to $112 a barrel. In Europe, stock markets rose slightly, with the European Stoxx 600 index rising by 0.9%. The UK\u2019s blue-chip FTSE 100 share index rose 1.6%.<\/p>\n
In the US, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones were up slightly in early afternoon trading on Wall Street. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was roughly flat.<\/p>\n
Natural gas prices rose slightly in Europe on Monday. Dutch month-ahead futures rose 1% to \u20ac54.70 a megawatt-hour.<\/p>\n
In Asia, where economies are highly exposed to the shortage in oil and gas coming out of the Gulf, stock markets dropped sharply before Trump\u2019s latest post. Japan\u2019s Nikkei fell by 2.8%, while the South Korean Kospi dropped 3%. Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng index shed about 0.8%.<\/p>\n
Oil price graph<\/p>\n
Investors have grown increasingly nervous as the conflict in the Middle East has escalated in recent days as a further 3,500 US troops have arrived in the Middle East. Houthi rebels in Yemen have now also entered the conflict, firing ballistic missiles at Israeli sites in a dangerous spread of the war that could also worsen the global energy crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still no sign of a clear end to the conflict, and given the various headlines, investors remain fearful about a fresh escalation,\u201d analysts at Deutsche Bank said.<\/p>\n
The war in the Middle East has ramped up oil prices to historic levels, with Brent crude now poised for its biggest monthly gain ever in March \u2013 up by 54% \u2013 beating the previous record of 46% in September 1990 after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.<\/p>\n
The disruption has fed through to prices at the petrol pump. The breakdown company RAC found that average petrol prices in the UK are now at 152p a litre, the highest level in 28 months. Diesel has reached 181.2p a litre, its highest level since December 2022, the RAC said. Industry figures have warned that there could be \u201ctemporary shortages\u201d at petrol pumps in the UK.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer was expected to hold talks on Monday afternoon with bosses from Shell, BP and the Norwegian energy company Equinor, as well as executives from the finance, insurance and shipping industries, about the crisis in the Middle East. The UK prime minister was expected to discuss what emergency measures might be needed to contain the crisis from the blockade in the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Brent traded as high as $119.50 a barrel during March, its highest level since June 2022, after Iran all but closed the strait, through which a fifth of global oil and gas would normally pass.<\/p>\n
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote, said: \u201cThere are bets that crude could rise to $150 and even to the $200 per barrel level if the war doesn\u2019t end quickly. I believe that demand would be heavily hit if prices go that high. Above $120-130 per barrel, global recession odds would take the upper hand and tame upside pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aluminium prices jumped more than 5% in Asia after Iran struck aluminium producers in Bahrain and the UAE over the weekend, she added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the UK <\/strong>chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to tell G7 nations that they must move faster on clean energy to insulate economies against global price shocks from oil and gas, as she and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, virtually meet G7 finance and energy ministers on Monday.<\/p>\n <\/span>Will Trump put boots on the ground in Iran? – The Latest<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The price of oil hit nearly $117 (\u00a389) a barrel on Monday as Donald Trump threatened to \u201cblow up\u201d and \u201ccompletely obliterate\u201d Iranian electricity plants, oil wells and its export hub Kharg Island if it did not agree to a deal. Brent crude rose after the US president wrote on his social media platform Truth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1747,4045,1745,1746,8454,102,3931,218,268,899,81,3723],"class_list":{"0":"post-47643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-barrel","9":"tag-blow","10":"tag-brent","11":"tag-crude","12":"tag-export","13":"tag-hits","14":"tag-hub","15":"tag-irans","16":"tag-oil","17":"tag-threatens","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-wells"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}